April and May

In April, Julia had the wonderful opportunity to head home to Michigan and do fun things like this:

Real eggs!

Plastic eggs!!!!

Looking good wife.

While Julia was in Michigan, I was in Alaska doing fun stuff like this:

Getting towed up the lateral moraine of Canwell Glacier.
Photo by Erik.

Making tracks up and down the slopes south of the
Canwell. Photo by Nick.

Skiing back down the lateral moraine on the Canwell.
Photo by Nick.

That was so much fun I decided to take Julia out there the next weekend to try to ski in the same area. We spent the night in a friend's cabin on Fielding Lake and woke up early the next morning to head to the mountains. Alaska is a spectacular place, both in terms of the people we have met and places we have seen. 

We have stopped and taken pictures at this spot nearly every time we have
 driven down the Richardson Highway. This time we had wonderful light.

We weren't able to get up there with downhill skiing equipment. So we switched to skate skis and scooted along the same trail I had taken a week earlier. Though we didn't have cloudless skies and we didn't put in any new skin tracks up the hill, it was still a spectacular outing.

Julia above the Canwell.

On the way back I found a soft spot in the trail. 

An outline of my face was visible in the snow.

Julia entering the canyon where our car was parked.

Before Julia headed to Michigan, her old ski coach and I had begun planning for competing in the Hot Springs 100 adventure race (also referred to as AlaskAcross). This was helpful when Julia was gone as it provided something to distract me from missing my lovely wife (though it wasn't even close to being adequately effective). We did a few hikes and long runs on weekends during April and May. One weekend we checked out the first nine miles of the route we planned to take. A walk on the Angel Rocks Trail, hike down to the river, and float back to a bike stashed in the woods was also enjoyable.

Angel Rocks

Looking down the Upper Chena River from near the top of the
Angel Rocks Trail.

Floating the Middle Fork of the Chena River.

When Julia had to leave Alaska again in May, I started to do all sorts of weird things, such as crying myself to sleep, eating only pasta and olive oil with a glass of water for a meal, and eating six pounds of Cocoa Crunchies and Magic Stars. I also started doing a few abnormal things to prepare for the race, like walking to and from a teacher inservice in Fairbanks and hiking all night to train for the race. On the second to last day of work at Ben Eielson Jr./Sr. High School, I walked to work and it took all night. I ferried across the raging Chena River at 2:30 AM in the morning. I very much by chance avoided an encounter with a pipeline service truck at 2:00 AM. I definitely didn't want to explain myself. He didn't see me, I wasn't going to wave. It probably wasn't the wisest adventure to go on, but whatever. I had lots of fun anyway. I followed an owl for about 45 minutes along the pipeline as I chased it from tree to tree. I sang nice and loud and nobody told me to shut it. It was good to be alone for a while.

The pipeline at twilight. The first ten piles of bear scat along
the pipeline service road weren't that disconcerting. But that
eleventh one really got me thinking.

Dawn breaking on very quiet Chena Lakes.

Finish line.

Tak for turen!

WikiMapia is fun.

After walking to work, there were less than two weeks left before the race. My tapering period began, mostly because my heel hurt from walking 27 miles on gravel and pavement. Thankfully everything was ready to roll for the race.

It's a very good thing when Julia is present. I eat and sleep far better than when she is around. Also Julia doesn't think my adventure choosing mechanism has enough checks and balances. But I'm still alive!

Ha!

Michael Creek Tour

In very many ways, my wife is amazing. On a trip up Michael Creek she proved once again that she is a sport and pretty dang tough. "Hey wife! Let's go do something fun!" does not always lead to fun. Julia is very patient. 

After making a run at Item Peak the weekend before, I got all excited and decided that we could make it to the top in one day if we started early enough and had good conditions. So Julia and I called some friends and headed down to Michael Creek to see how far we could get. 

Julia and Ella were a bit green when it came to mountaineering so before we left we strapped on the crampons for 20 minutes of fun.

Getting ready to crampon on snow piles at UAF.

 We drove down to Michael Creek Friday night and the four of us piled into our 1- err 3-season tent around midnight with some occasional gusts of wind. The view from the tent in the morning did not indicate good weather.

Crud. Clouds and blowing snow.

 But things cleared sufficiently as we made breakfast and put away the tent. I briefly chastised Julia for the choices she made related to the food she wanted to bring along in her pack. Celery is not a common mountaineering snack. But she was patient with my impatience and we slapped skins on our skis and took off.

Up the creek.

 After a few minutes of breaking trail, blue skies appeared and we were feeling good.

Looking west towards the Delta River and Richardson Highway.

What was not looking good was the lack of trail. The weekend before there had been no loose snow in any portion of the canyon. Now there was a new foot of snow and more blowing snow collecting in the canyon as we moved through. With no groups ahead of us that morning we broke trail through the length of the canyon, paying close attention to areas of avalanche danger.

"Further in and farther up!"

Getting out of the canyon and into the valley.

 It took us five hours of significant effort to travel as far as we had gone in two hours the previous week. Around 1 PM a pair of skiers passed us as we rested. We started following their trail but our expedition began to unravel. Julia's ski boots were treating her very poorly. Five hours of slogging through a foot of snow is very different than an hour and a half of skinning and skiing in the dark at Moose Mountain. The weather began to deteriorate. Lenticular clouds were developing on small knobs on the ridge we planned to follow and spin drift was coming off the ridge as well. The new snow was beginning to do exciting things as well as we moved through it. Jeremy mentioned enthusiastically, "Whompf means the climb is on!" I agreed but the girls were less than excited about reaching our objective.

So we called it good. Julia's countenance changed immediately and even though her feet were very sore, she began to enjoy skiing again because we were pointing ourselves towards the car rather than away from it.

Everybody look at your skis! Nice.

Jeremy maintained a positive attitude for the duration of the trip. 

So we turned around and headed back. I wandered ahead of the group to take some pictures of the descent out of the valley. Julia fell down.

Expressing sympathy for Julia.

A little further down after they had passed me, Julia fell down again.

My turn to express sympathy for Julia.
"Hey, get up."

A little further on down, Julia fell again.

Ella's turn to express sympathy.

 At this point Julia's feet hurt very bad. Bruises on her toes were developing. But she kept on.

Look at that smile. 

Also, the view was gorgeous.

Heading back into the canyon.

 Most of our tracks had disappeared due to blowing snow. We kept on, careful to avoid the open water from the flowing creek below us.

Waiting for the downhill section to clear.

Happy to be out of doors.

Shortly after this, Julia fell down again and started to whimper a bit. This was by far the most spectacular of the four crashes. But we dug her out of the snow and she picked herself up and continued on. I happened to get it on video. Let me know if you would like to see it. It is maybe a little bit humorous.

Scooting down one of the more difficult portions of the canyon
shortly after her big face plant.

We got out of the canyon, loaded up the car, and headed back to Fairbanks a bit earlier than expected. But we had wandered around in a beautiful place on skis for about 7 hours and enjoyed time with good friends.

*I should mention that Jeremy is a very experienced climber/mountaineer. He would not concede defeat and the next week he teamed up with his climbing buddy from the Muldrow Route on Denali and another uber athlete and they charged their way up to Item Peak in one day. They broke trail like we did in our first attempt for approximately 11-12 hours and made it to Item at 7 PM.

In the car on the way home (On the way home! Not even a few days later!) Julia mentioned that she had fun and would like to do something similar again. She even seemed sincere. She had cried twice and her feet were throbbing but she wanted to try it again. I suppose we should try to find boots that fit a little better.

My wife is pretty. And tough. And awesome.

A Winter Solstice Cabin Hop

Several years ago, a forecast for -20 degrees over Christmas vacation made staying indoors and watching TV sound pretty good. Since then I have enjoyed a few years in Fairbanks, made a couple of clothing and gear purchases, figured out that the outdoors can bring far more delight to a soul than a TV show or sporting event, and met some ambitious adventurers to provide some insight and motivation. Now -20 degrees brings to mind things like, "Well, we could probably pull it off." Or "At least it will likely be a nice clear day."

December 21 was a gloriously clear day. We soaked up all the solstice sun we would get.

Also, we were cold.

Eyal is an ambitious UAF student from Israel that Julia and I met a while back. He was interested in heading out on a backcountry ski trip. After exploring some of the options and taking a look at the weather forecast (somewhere between -15 and -30 on the days we planned to head out), we decided on a Chena Hot Springs Road cabin hop.

The GPS and map software were both very helpful. Below is our route:

This adventure was not too far away that we couldn't get ourselves out of trouble but definitely far enough away that we could feel a sense of separation from civilization. We were out for three days and two nights and we did not see another person until skiing along the road midway through our last day on the trail. It was a great trip.

The first day was all on skis up to Stiles Creek Cabin.

Eyal on the trail. 

Stiles Creek Cabin

A nice full moon on the first night. Unfortunately we
conked out 2 hours before a lunar eclipse. Eyal photo.

We woke up the next morning with the intention of making our way up to the Chena Dome (Chena Doom) trail and down into the Angel Creek drainage to Lower Angel Creek Cabin. We used snowshoes the entire day.

We followed a very nice unmaintained trail north off of the Stiles Creek trail for a few miles through the trees.

Towards the tree line. Eyal photo

The trail disappeared above the tree line, which we made just after the sunrise at 11:00 AM.

What a day.

Alaska Range in the morning light. Eyal photo.

Mount Hayes

A solstice sunrise. Eyal photo

A shadow cast at noonday. 

Soaking up the view from the ridge. Eyal photo.
"Oh Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made!"

Above tree line.

We slogged through some pretty deep snow along a minor ridge and finally made our way up to the Chena Dome trail and the highest points on the trip, just in time to watch the sun set at 2:41 PM. 

Starting along the ridge.

Through the Dr. Seuss terrain. 

Chena Dome across the valley.

One of the climbs along the Chena Dome trail as the sun sets. 

Mount Moffit and Mount Hayes in the evening light. 

The night was clear and we pushed through some thigh deep snow (unfortunately perpendicular to a difficult to find trail) down into the Angel Creek drainage. We were grateful to have a near full moon to help with the route-finding through the trees. Thankfully we were close enough to the trail to come across Upper Angel Creek Cabin. Because it was dark and cold and no one was using this cabin, we decided to stay in this cabin rather than get to Lower Angel Creek Cabin three miles further down the trail. This was a good decision. A very good stove, relatively dry wood, a pair of slippers, and an unopened MRE were waiting for us at Upper Angel Creek.

Upper Angel Creek Cabin

The trail we couldn't find the night before. We descended
from the ridge in the background.

The next day the skis were back on as we skied down the valley to Chena Hot Springs Road from the cabin. Then we followed a great dog mushing trail along the road to Chena Hot Springs.

Coming down Angel Creek. 

Arriving at the gate to Chena Hot Springs. The temperature
was somewhere near -12 degrees.

We arrived at about 5:00 PM at the hot springs, about 2.5 hours before we expected my lovely wife to arrive and shuttle us home. That long wait was not a problem. We had spent much of the past three days  outside in temperatures that likely never got above -10 degrees. Three hours soaking in warm water did wonders for the legs. Not even a pinch of sore muscles the next day. Just some tender feet and fingers from a bit of frost nip.

Though I didn't know Eyal when we first started planning, we became well acquainted as the trip progressed. He grew up in Israel and headed home to Haifa for the holidays after our trip. We had plenty of time to get to know each other. Our conversations included discussions of the stuff we were using, route-finding, idiosyncrasies of stoves, life in Isreal, studying chemistry, exploring Alaska, food preparation on backcountry trips, and, my personal favorite, where Jesus shows up in the Old Testament.

The grace of God in the Old Testament points to Christ continuously and we enjoyed that reality in conversation.


Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 
(John 3:1-15 ESV)


What a joy to discuss Numbers 21 and John 3. All we must do is look to Christ and we escape the just wrath of a loving God! Look!

It was a trip full of joy.

"Look! Look! Look!"